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From the Postmodern to the Pre-Modern: More Recent Changes in Literature, Art and Theory

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From the Postmodern to the Pre-Modern: More Recent Changes in Literature, Art and Theory ISSN 0258–0802. LITERATÛRA 2007 49(5) FROM THE POSTMODERN TO THE PRE-MODERN: MORE RECENT CHANGES IN LITERATURE, ART AND THEORY Herbert Grabes Proffesor, Justus-Liebig-Universität That literature, art and theory have changed accident, then, I might add, that the very term considerably since the early and more spectacular ‘postmodernism’ should have entered phase of postmodernity in the nineteen-sixties and awareness via Charles Jencks’s lucubrations seventies is too obvious to be overlooked. These on contemporary architecture, an essentially changes raise questions regarding their actual extent visual domain. Too great was the contrast and quality, their presumable causes and their already between the stylish late modernist Colour discernible consequences – three aspects to which Field paintings of American Abstract I will be directing your attention in the following Expressionism and the new presentation of remarks. banal objects of everyday use, such as Jasper First, then, the extent and quality of the Johns’s “Two Beer Cans” (1960) or Andy changes that can be observed in the domains Warhol’s “Brillo Box” (1964) as well as the of literature, art and theory: in order to let you foregrounding of the nature of such objects share my observations, I will have to draw at as mass products of consumer culture in least a rough sketch of the situation then and Warhol’s famously iconic “200 Campbell now: that is, of the state of play in the Soup Cans” (1962). What soon came to be nineteen-sixties and seventies as against the called “Pop Art” further included the situation obtaining from the nineteen-eighties integration of the sexy images of advertising, onwards. as in the paintings of Tom Wesselman, the In retrospect, the difference between the large-scale stylized imitations of comic-book new works of art and literature from the or cartoon-strip figures and objects and nineteen-sixties and those of the nineteen-fifties speech- or thought-balloons as represented seems so great that it is no wonder observers by Roy Lichtenstein, and Claes Oldenburg’s soon began speaking of a ‘postmodernism’, magnified plastic reproductions of icons of in the sense that ‘modernism’ seemed to be everyday consumable or utilitarian culture over. I would like to begin with the advent of (just think of his “Two Cheeseburgers with postmodernism in the domain of the visual Everything” from 1962). arts because it was especially here that the At the same time, the techniques of re- phenomenon was so unmistakably visible – no presentation were largely influenced by the use 42 and imitation of mechanical reproduction. While in the domain of postmodern art and Warhol, for instance, used acrylic paint and oil literature Pop Art seemed so spectacular in its paint to create the impression of silkscreen prints move beyond the previous limits of aesthetic or newspaper reproductions of photographs, taste that it appeared as another avant-garde Rauschenberg imitated the look of TV images, movement, in the domain of theory the re- Lichtenstein the raster screen appearance of placement of structuralism by poststructuralist comic-book frames as quotations from mass ideas and deconstruction meant a similarly culture, but they all emphasized the distance radical break with the previously dominant between that culture and their art by an trend. After 1977, when Jacques Derrida’s De alienation effect that was achieved via the la Grammatologie (1967) appeared in English extreme magnification involved in their very translation, deconstruction became the new large canvases. What nevertheless was orthodoxy. Yet even if poststructuralist thought surprising was how well the ubiquitous and looked like the theoretical base of postmodern banal images of mass culture were suited as literature and art, it has to be said that artists sujets for works of art. and writers had become postmodern even The literary equivalent to Pop Art was the earlier, or at least at the same time as the integration and refinement of the structural theorists. patterns of popular genre literature and the wide This is borne out by works from the use of the clichés of everyday speech. Much nineteen-sixties like Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 of the latter can be found, for instance, in (1961), Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire (1962), works like Donald Barthelme’s Snow White and Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying Lot of 49 (1967), Richard Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in (1966), novels with a clearly anti- America (1967), or Stanley Elkin’s The Dick foundationalist stance. And as to the free play Gibson Show (1971), while the preferred genres of signifiers, where could one study it better ranged from science fiction (as in Kurt than in Richard Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle (1963) and fantasy America from 1967, a novel in which (as in Richard Brautigan’s In Watermelon arbitrariness reigns supreme? The exhibition of Sugar, 1968) to the detective novel [eher: arbitrariness was quite obviously also one of the conspiracy thriller] (as in Thomas Pynchon’s objectives of the artists of the time, as can The Crying of Lot 49, 1966) and crime fiction be gathered from the ‘combines’ of Robert or ‘faction’ (Truman Capote, In Cold Blood, Rauschenberg (for instance, his “Monogram” 1966) as well as the western and the horror from 1959), the ‘environments’ of Claes story (Richard Brautigan, The Hawkline Oldenburg (“Four Environments”, 1963) or the Monster, 1974). And I should not forget to ‘assemblages’ of James Rosenquist (“Mixed mention that the popular pattern of the horror Media”, 1963), from ‘Earthworks’ and ‘Land story was used in feminist works like Margaret Art’ like Robert Smithson’s “Spiral Jetty” or Atwood’s Lady Oracle (1976), Angela Carter’s Walter de Maria’s “Lightning Field”, and, above The Passion of New Eve (1977), and in all, from most of the works belonging to combination with science fiction in, for ‘Concept Art’ – for instance, the series of random instance, Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of photographs by Vito Acconci or John Dribbet. Darkness (1975) and Marge Piercy’s Woman The radical relativization of validity stressed on the Edge of Time (1976). in poststructuralist theory is also a strong 43 feature of earlier postmodern literature and art, One of the most astounding events in the where it takes the shape of irony and self-irony, domain of art was the appearance of the various parody, or travesty. I would just like to recall “Neo”-movements from the late nineteen- John Barth’s parody of Ebenezer Cooke’s seventies onwards. Starting with the neo- verse satire The Sot-Weed Factor (1708) in expressionist painting of the “Neue Wilde”, there his novel with the same title from 1960, or soon reappeared an abstract geometrical art Donald Barthelme’s satirical travesty Snow under the name of “Neo-Geo”, which in turn White (1967). was soon followed by “Neo-Conceptualism”. That a relativizing ironical stance was also Such an open declaration of ‘new’ work as a shared by postmodern artists is shown by the variation and renovation of something already provocative celebration of the banal and the existing had been utterly impossible during corresponding trivialization of the lofty and modernism and actually been barred since dignified, as in many of the paintings of Sandro absolute novelty became a decisive criterion Chia, Enzo Cucchi and Francesco Clemente, of aesthetic quality with the eighteenth-century or the treatment of important German historical conception of the original genius. Suddenly the myths by Anselm Kiefer. minimal difference of mere variation became As is well known, the integration of a self- not only acceptable, but – with its obvious déja- ironical critical discourse in narrative became vu effect – even desirable. It is, for instance, such a typical feature of some postmodern hard, when contemplating Roni Horn’s fiction that one soon spoke of ‘metafiction’ as presentation of two parts of a severed beam a new subgenre. Typical specimens are John (“Parted Mass”) from 1985 to tell it apart from Barth’s novel Lost in the Funhouse and many the works of Carl Andre in the nineteen-sixties, of the postmodern short stories and tales of and frequently we also find ‘quotations’ of Donald Barthelme, Gilbert Sorrentino and earlier styles, as when Gerhard Richter’s Robert Coover. “Strich (auf Rot)” from 1980 alludes to the Metafiction was, however, only one art informel of the 1950s, or even of particular particular kind of the mixing of discourses, works, for instance of Edvard Munch’s “The styles and genre patterns that stood in Scream” (1893) in Enzo Cucchi’s “Paesaggio absolute contrast to late modernist purism. Barbaro” (1983). Other examples include Kurt Vonnegut’s What became visible in the nineteen-nineties Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) with its combination was already the bewildering diversity of styles of historical war novel and science fiction and that still prevails to this day. There were some Norman Mailer’s The Armies of the Night spectacular events like the covering of the (1968) with its blending of documentary prose Reichstag in Berlin by Christo and Jeanne- and novelistic narration. Claude in 1995, and a predilection for spatial arrangements showed also in the great variety * * * of ‘installations’. Regarding painting, new All these reminders of earlier postmodern art abstract art (to which even someone like and literature are meant only to help us see Georg Baselitz contributed) competed with more clearly how much different was most ‘naive’ realism and the various other kinds of of what came after. ‘realism’ that could be found, for instance, in 44 the exhibition “Radical Realism After Picabia” Wallace, Middlesex (2002) by Jeffrey that was in 2002 first shown in the Centre Eugenides, or The Corrections (2001) by Pompidou and then in the Kunsthalle in Vienna.
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